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Thursday, July 31, 2014

morning work {painting an old table}

I am a collector. A large part of my artistic and creative process is in the activity of discovery and collection. I have been understanding this with increasing depth over the past year.It began in the fall when I was finally able to move my work and pieces of this and that into my new home studio space. I gathered together objects that I had collected over the past several years into one space and discovered two, well maybe three things. First I had enough stuff to open a small shop; it was way more than I could personally make use of; and what I loved almost more than the objects had been the act of gathering and collecting them.First the discovery and collection and next the playing and arranging -- the mixing of styles, elements and materials -- in short the curation of many old and only partially usable things.These three discoveries led me on two paths: the first was quite concrete, renting a space in a sweet and sassy little vintage shop in my village (I love that I live in a place that identifies municipalities as villages); the second a bit more abstract -- an awareness that for me the creative process is deeply rooted in activity and experience, in the gathering of objects and ideas, participation, observation and action. It was process rather than product that I needed to focus on.

Almost one year later, I am still keeping up with the vintage shop because it is a direct outlet for my collecting bug -- a quick repository for the objects I can not pass up. And I am farther down the path of discovery, entrenched in a process that is ever circulating and trying to be present in the experience.